


My routine down here (is to think of you)

by BrightDream



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Character Study, Concrete cell, DOPF kind of spoilers if you haven't read anything about it, Gen, Inspired by The Bent Bullet Article, M/M, Prison, Trying to guess DOFP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-08 05:37:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1128965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrightDream/pseuds/BrightDream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Years living in a concrete cell are certainly an unique experience, hours dragging one after another."</p>
<p>Character Study; in which Erik is locked up in the Trask concrete cell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My routine down here (is to think of you)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this soon after the Bent Bullet site first went online, but ended up forgetting about it.  
> Yesterday something inspired me to finish it, so here it goes.

Years living in a concrete cell are certainly an unique experience, hours dragging one after another.

The lights turn on at the exact same hour every morning, bright and white; and soon after he is receiving his breakfast from the usual guard.

He eats, bathes, shaves with the nonmagnetic platinum razor (nowhere near sharp) and finally exercises, always in the same order: pushups then abdominals, then side planks...-

When he finishes, Erik still has a couple of hours to the kill until the next meal, so that’s what he does, sitting on the uncomfortable lump on the floor he calls a bed and staring at the ceiling. 

In the beginning, it used to drive Erik crazy not to do anything, so he would take the time to draw, anything and everything **:** places and cities, expressions and things, memories and people. But nine years have passed (or so they tell him, he gave up counting the days long ago) and now he only draws when he has a particular idea, when he can’t _not_ do it.  It’s not that he grew tired of drawing, no, but he has found out the hard way that even that can be used against him.

“Who is that?” one guard asked once when he saw Erik drawing Anya, giggling like he remembered her. “Your kid?”

(Erik pushed the paper away and refused to answer.)

Another time, another guard, one Erik hated, spotted the piece of paper inside “The Once and Future King” and took it before he could do anything about it. “Oh, but I knew it” he provoked; looking at one of the sketches Erik was most proud of. It was Charles on the bed, only in his boxers, smiling. “You’re not only a disgusting mutant, but also a dirty fag.”

(Erik attacked that day, with his bare fists, until the guard’s nose was bleeding and three more came to push him away and give Erik the worst beating of his life.)

Nowadays, he doesn’t put himself in that position anymore.

He rarely draws and prefers to spend the time remembering things inside his head instead, while he faces the glass ceiling.

“The Observatory”, they call it, the place where sometimes humans come to watch him, as if he is some sort of an animal inside a zoo cell. Scientists and Trask more often, but not only them, as proved in that remarkable day when President Lyndon Johnson came in person and Erik stared at his nails the entire while.

Lunch always come at the same hour, usually when Erik is getting sick of facing the glass. There are only two kinds of combinations, and none of them are very good. Erik eats mechanically, then rests for some time (as if he needs to rest from doing nothing) and then takes a book from the corner.

Erik is allowed to have many books, which has nothing to do with “human rights” or “fair treatment” as he is sure Trask must say to the people who come take a peak though the glass. For them, books are a control mechanism and that’s’ all.

Erik still remember the first few weeks in this prison, when he wasn’t given anything to read or to draw, or anything at all for that matter, and it slowly started to drive him crazy.

After the first month, he was seriously considering taking the not sharp razor and trying to slice his own throat, if only to do something, _anything._

The guards must have noticed his uneasiness, because they brought the books soon after. It was said to him that he would receive more if he behaved nicely and it would be taken away if he tried any funny business (as the time when Erik broke the son of a bitch’s nose and they left him without any books for weeks).

It sounds ridiculous when he thinks about it, books used as bargaining chip, but he has found that he can’t stand the boredom without them. So when the guards come in once in every two weeks with a book and a shot of inhibitor (because even though they are underground and no metal is allowed in the facility, it never hurts to be too precautious) Erik takes the shot.

Before, Erik liked the books to have something to do and also because there were some good reads in there. He received mostly non-fiction: philosophy, science and even a few language books, although some had been literature.

“The Once and Future King”, for example. It was one of the first he got and also one of which he held most dear, because Charles had always said it was his favorite. Erik had never had the opportunity to read it before, but in jail he found that he liked it.

He liked it so much, indeed, that when they took all his books after the nose incident, it was the one he missed the most. They never got him his books back afterwards, just brought him new ones with every shot, which left Erik feeling incredibly bitter. He felt like he could have lost any book but this one, because this one, this one had meant something...-

Three weeks later a new copy of “The Once and Future King” came with his inhibitor.

“Who chooses the books?” he asked the guard, one of his favorites. The man startled, because Erik had quite a name for not talking to anyone.

“I don’t know, man” he shrugged, and that was a nice thing about him, the way he called Erik ‘man’ as if he was just a friend of his “I think someone brings them to you; someone in your family maybe?”

But it couldn’t be. Erik didn’t have a family.

It took him a while longer to figure out the books mystery, although when he did, he felt like a complete idiot. It happened in 1966, approximately two year after being locked in the cell (he still counted the days back there). He was reading the newest book at the time, completely focused in the story, when he saw an underlined word. He had noticed those in other books before, as if someone else had read them and marked their favorite bits, words like “see” and “I” and “don’t”. He had never paid attention to them, because there seemed to be too few and too random, three or four words lost between hundreds of pages with no further meaning. But this time, right in front of his face, he saw it, clear as day, and stopped.

Charles

Charles was the name of a secondary character in the book, yes, but why in God’s name would that be underlined? It seemed like an awful coincidence and Erik didn’t believe in coincidences.

He sat straighter and started to flip through the book, looking for underlined words, any words, so quickly he almost tore the pages. There were a few more, scattered: “you” and “don’t” and “you” again. Erik lounged for his pencil under the pillows, and quickly scribbled down the words on the last page, each one he could find, in the order he found them.

And then he froze and had to lean against the wall, because the phrase was clear _“You know this is Charles, don’t you?”_

Erik spent the next few days decrypting Charles’ messages, one by one, a task that was no near easy, but damn worth it.

In “On the Origin of Species” he found _“They don’t allow me to see you and they check to make sure I don’t write anything”_ , and in “War and Peace” _“For I know you are not guilty”._ In the “Interpretation of Dreams” the phrase said _“I dream about us constantly, although time has passed”_ and in his second copy of “The Once and Future King” _“Used to be my favorite book, now it’s just another thing that reminds me of you”_

The message that wrecked him, though he found four days later in a Spanish Poetry Book. It said _“Quiero odiarte, pero todavía te quiero”_ and it was simple really, simple and direct, but strong as a punch to the gut.

Erik hadn’t talked to Charles since Cuba, hadn’t even seen him properly ever since that day. He had seen him after, yes; Charles had come to the court on the day of Erik’s trial, but that didn’t really count.

Erik never had the opportunity to tell Charles how sorry he was, how ashamed. Erik  never had the opportunity to see Charles laugh again, or cry, or sing, or the opportunity to tell him that Erik wanted him still, despite everything.

Charles had no way of knowing that Erik though about him every day, all the time. And yet he sent books. Yet he said _““Quiero odiarte, pero todavía te quiero”_ and it brought tears to Erik’s eyes and left a hole in his chest.

After he discovered that, the books stopped being merely something to do. They became something to enjoy, slowly, piece by piece, each word whispering a secretive and hopeful message directly inside Erik’s ear...-

They come still, after all these years.

Erik something wonders why Charles bothers; imagines that someday he’ll probably be so busy at that school of his that he will forget to send it, move on with his life.

It never happens.

Every two weeks they come and every afternoon Erik reads, Charles’ messages first (varying from things like _“It’s been sunny lately”, Sometimes it’s easy to hate you”_ and _“Wish you were here”),_ then the actual book, again and again, until his eyes are tired and they are bringing him his dinner.

Dinner comes at seven, every single day. They bring it at the same hour, but somehow seem to waste all their precision in that, because it manages to be even worse than lunch.

He puts his book away, eats, brushes his teeth and really, it’s all he has the time for before they are turning off the lights.

It gets cold inside Erik’s cell at night; blankets purposely thin, uniform useless to hold any heat. He curls into a ball in the uncomfortable bed and drifts away, lost in thoughts. How the Mutant Cause is going? Is Mystique still free? Has Charles grown that beard he was always talking about?

Charles.

It’s like all comes back to him, somehow.

Erik’s mornings and afternoons are already filled with him, in his thoughts, in his drawings, in his books; the night has no reason to be any different.

Charles.

Erik remembers laying down with him after they’d made love, Charles sprawled bonelessly on top of the sheets, his pale, perfect skin glistening with sweat.  He remembers the feel of Charles enveloping his mind, like a warm, thick blanket, their fingers intertwined. Remembers a hand around his cock, pumping him exactly the way he likes it, blue eyes and smug smile...

He can’t get Charles to lay down with him, nor can he get that wonderful feel of his telepathic touch. He can get the hand though, the hand that he can pretend it’s Charles’ hand, the hand that goes around his cock, the other hand that goes inside himself...-

There are cameras around here, he knows, knows that someone could be at the Observatory watching the shadows. It’s not hard to imagine what he’s doing underneath the blankets, but in honesty he couldn’t care less.

Charles.

If only Erik could have him again, if he got to _see him_ at least. He dreams about that, dreams about them together somehow, somewhere.

 Sometimes the dreams are pretty objective, like those in which he gets a visit, Charles fooling Trask and wheeling inside the cell to say hello. Other times, it’s farfetched scenarios after   Charles has come to rescue him, killing all the guards (or all but his favorite), Alex blasting through that glass.

That would never happen in reality, of course.

 Charles would never put himself and his school at risk like that, would never break a law so carelessly. Erik was the one who did things like that, while Charles, well he always preferred to act from the backstage, pulling his strings here and there to try to get what he wanted.

Charles.

He’s what kept Erik alive in this prison for nine years.

He’s the hope Erik doesn’t think he will ever manage to let go.

He’s everything that matters, but then probably nothing matters, because Erik will never get to see him again.

Erik sighs and falls asleep, knowing that the next day will be an exact copy of everything that happened today, so it’s not like he’ll be losing much by sleeping...

 

\- 

 

The next day, they come to the rescue.

 

**Author's Note:**

> "Quiero odiarte, pero todavía te quiero" can be translated as "I want to hate you, but I love you still".
> 
> Also, now I should probably say that I read Bryan Singer saying somewhere that one of the first things Charles does after Logan arrives is getting Erik out of prison. ;)
> 
> English is not my first language, sorry for any mistakes. Feedback is always appreciated.


End file.
